I use oxygen bleach (I think it's Earth Friendly Products brand?) with every diaper load, but I do use bleach bleach once a month on everything since we have been battling a bit of a mildew problem due to humidity and chlorine bleach is the only thing that will totally get rid of the spots. I do about 15 rinses afterward and so far so good. It hasn't affected the diaper colors at all either.

Good to know it doesn't ruin the colors. I think I'll start with the oxygen bleach for now, thankfully we haven't had any mildew problems but Guineapiglet has started solids so I know some nasty poo is coming our way and I want to be prepared. So far I would call it more tasting than eating as doesn't manage to eat more than 1/2 teaspoon before she's asks (aka headbutts my boobs) for milk. So no nasty transitional poop yet but I'm sure it's coming.

My entire existence is on amazon. I get so many packages the UPS woman and I have actually become good friends! I've seen this product before and heard some good things about it. If it has the Tofulish stamp of approval then I'll give it a whirl!

This is kind of an elaborate back story, but I live in Norway and my parents live in the US, they are coming to visit in one month and I'm attempting to have them bring us "everything we will need" (ha!) for the first several months of future baby's life. Cloth diapering is much more common in the US plus everything is about half the price in the US as it is here, so this makes a lot of sense, even though it sounds ridiculous. I've been following craigslist in my Mom's city and my sister's city for the past four months or so, and I've been able to get all the newborn prefolds and covers we need (which I expect will be usable until future baby is about 6 weeks) and 6 one size covers and 12 size small prefolds used. The last 2 dozen small size prefolds are just not manifesting so I think I need to go new. I was leaning towards Osocozy based purely on the fact that I can buy them from my mom's local cloth diaper store which is run by awesome people. Can anyone tell me if they have a strong preference for GMD over Osocozy prefolds? Some people claim Osocozy prefolds are too long and narrow? Is this a common problem? Other people claim GMD are just softer and better quality- is there any truth to this in folk here's opinions? I know that cloth diapering is sooooo personal as to what the parents like vs. how the baby turns out to be shaped, but a person has to try, right?

We are biting the bullet and going to start cloth diapering despite not yet owning our own washer/dryer and having to use a public coin-operated washer/dryer. We bought lots and lots of used diapers before Malka was born, but have been using disposables all along because of the washer situation. Now we're coming up on the end of a box of disposables and we just can't bear to keep buying them when we have perfectly good diapers sitting there ready to use.

I have two questions:a) Malka is still eating nearly no solid food and has very mushy poops, what's the best way to get that stuff off?and b) any advice for laundering diapers in coin-operated machines? We can't set the machines to do pre-wash or extra rinse and most of the machines also lock when the cycle starts so you can't take things out and start switching washers or anything. Should I just wash them twice? Wash once with detergent, once without to get off any residue? If I were going to do a cold pre-wash, hot wash or some similar combination, should I just do a full cycle cold, then full cycle hot?

We just do a standard wash with Rocking Green for our diaps - both the EBF yellow mustard slime poos and the peanut buttery ones. I don't have to scrape as yet. Just toss them all in. I do add BioKleen Oxygen Bleach to get the last stains out if I can't sun them out.

_________________My oven is bigger on the inside, and it produces lots of wibbly wobbly, cake wakey... stuff. - The PoopieB.

Ariann, we were using public coin-operated (in our old apartment building's laundry room) washers for the 1st couple months. I recall being self-conscious about putting poopy diapers in the machine so I either tried to scrape as much poo off as I could with a wipe into the toilet or even rinsing em in the sink/tub (gross.) D was on soy formula and the output wasn't that sticky though. Then we did a hot water wash with detergent - we just used All Free n Clear - followed by a cold wash. It seemed to be fine if a little expensive, and we opted to just hang-dry in our apartment to save $ on the dryer at least. Good luck! It was great to finally bite the bullet and purchase a washer to use in our kitchen when we moved, but I know not all landlords allow it.

I used coin operated apartment building washers and dryers for our cloth diapers when Reno was a baby. I'm convinced they ruined them. BUT........I know more now then I did then. I highly recommend washing a load of towels and/or clothes in the washer you are going to use before washing the diapers. It will help get rid of any fabric softener residue/scented gross laundry detergent out of there. One time workers were in the washer dryer area of the basement smoking and my diapers came out reeking of cig. smoke. Another problem with apartment machines is sometimes it would take me days to get a free washer (not a problem if using a laundromat). I still have these problem while sharing a washer/dryer with my parents in the 2 family we live in. It can take days to wash and i can't get them to stop using this shitty soap and softener..plus the dryer sheets in the dryers. I hate having to do my own laundry before my diaper laundry. :)

If you ever need to do a presoak I use to do it in our bathtub. For washing I would and still do: cold wash (with soap), hot wash (with soap), regular wash (no soap..it's just to get the soap out).

My fondest memory of coin operated laundry is the bank alway's asking us if we run a small business because of the amount of quarters we would get from them!

Jenna - the washers are in our apartment complex (a building over). We usually don't have to wait to get a washer, but there are a couple that are just always broken and keep getting "fixed" and then break again if you use them, so the actual availability is questionable. It helps to do laundry at 10 o'clock at night, though.

Okay, so I didn't realize that I might actually need different sized prefolds to go in my Thirsties. Baby's not here yet, so not a crazy rush, but I just have a whole bunch - maybe 24? Need to double check. But they're not the kind with the coloured thread on the edge, so I don't know what size they are. Does it matter? And how many should I have? Does 36 seem like enough?

_________________when you realise how perfect everything is, you will tilt you head back and laugh at the sky. -buddha

I think 24 is more than fine! I had 24 smallish prefolds (they didn't have colored thread either but they were from the Bummi's starter kit and good for 8-15 lbs). However, to make things easier I got 12 newborn size prefolds, which were really nice for the first 3 weeks or so, when folding down the larger size would have been super bulky (and we kind of sucked at prefolds in the beginning so not having extra steps was nice). Doing laundry every day we never went through more than 12, but the extras are nice for burp rags.

I had 28 NB prefolds for Leela which we used constantly when she was tiny. I still use them in the size 2 thirsties, so its not like they aren't useful later. I have 20 of the biggest prefolds for her now and end up folding down about 5" but its not as bulky as I would have thought.

_________________My oven is bigger on the inside, and it produces lots of wibbly wobbly, cake wakey... stuff. - The PoopieB.

Has anyone tried a Capri diaper cover? We had a blow out while we were out shopping and needed a new cover to make it home. We were near a store that had these covers and the one we got is so nice. I wish I had more of them but they are pricey. Very adjustable and keeps everything in the prefold and not the cover.

So, we have the bum genius aio diapers. Now that grey is older they are super leaky and he is so tall that they hardly cover his butt crack. Should we try different cloth diapers or go to disposables? What kid should we try? How old did people potty train? I don't really want to invest $350 more dollars on diapers if we are going to potty train in six months

Flip has a new line of training pants out, but I can't speak to how they work; we've had Violet in disposables while we've been homeless. I suppose I need to get ready for the potential shock of her having outgrown the cloth once we get to California!

I think age of potty training can vary a lot. At 19.5 months, we've tried to get Lydia to sit on the potty to try it out, and she's not interested at all. Our ped suggested working on it closer to age 2. If you do EC though, I've known babies as young as 13 months who are basically toilet trained.

About big cloth diapers, would you be adverse to trying a few prefolds? If you aren't interested in learning to pin/snappi them, you can always just lay them in a wrap style cover, and it's almost as easy as an AIO. For an older baby you could probably get away with a dozen prefolds and 4 or 5 covers (covers depend on how much your kid poops-- you can reuse covers when it's just pee).

I would be fine with pre folds, getting my husband to ever change a diaper again after we made that switch is another thing. If I get the fancy diaper and he thinks it is easy, no problem. Otherwise there will be a constant battle of me trying to cloth diaper and him using disposables. He is really great with the diapers we have now, but I don't want to complicate things for him.

Yeah, I hear you on that. It's really important to me that my partner and I share diaper duty, so we can't switch things up at all.

About leaks, is it possible that you just need to boost absorbancy a bit? I thought Lydia had outgrown our medium size sposoeasy AIO diapers, but they will still work for us if I stuff extra hemp babies doublers in there.

These don't have pockets, they are ll one piece, is that what you have? I think if I it anything else in there it won't be long enough, he is really tall and it just barely covers his butt crack, I think if I put any other things in there it would just be more bulky and cover even less.